Trippin

The commuting has been weird again, and that's a good sign. Like a drop in the unemployment rate or whatever signaling an improving economy, weird commuting for me is evidence that an abundance of thought and progress is ahead in days or weeks or months.

First was the trip to the local coffee shop for the decaf for carolyn. The wait was long and many awkward interactions were happening all around me and it was incredible. A young accountant told an older engineer about her craft; she likes to send her clients packets to prepare for the coming tax season because for them to pay her to add up receipts doesn't do anyone any good. She was interupted no less than four times trying to tell this one sentence to her coffee companion. Her coffee companion wore those platform shoes one wears when one has different-length legs. Then the woman with the pleather pants and the man with the blue highwaters. And my neighbor cody and the weird awkwardness around us all. But the great light! But the 15 minute wait for a cup of coffee. That's just not good business. 

Then, a beautiful face smiled at me from a real estate sign on the walk to the train. This young woman, a Ms. Abbot I believe, seemed to beckon a return of maximin at least to tour the house, then bed the woman and eventually leave her for south america. Then on the train I snagged an open seat and at the next stop, an incredibly unkept native american with missing teeth but a great smile scaring everyone and needing to get to another part of the train, and me wanting to photograph this man, and realizing that I had already missed photographing the beautiful Ms. Abbot (on a real estate sign), and how somehow without the picture of her, the picture of this fella just wouldn't have mattered. But the guy fully creeped everyone else out including the oriental girl across from me with the cashmere overcoat with the pink arms.

Two days earlier, the most awkward train ride of my life, sitting down a pair of young females stood in the aisle next to me, and the one nearest me smelled awful like a hippy who doesn't bathe, and the conversation they were having was only slightly less annoying than the horrible music that kept playing on my ipod and the kid sitting to my left who would join in the conversation with these young women uninvited and the awkwardness of them having this conversation around me and my music only getting worse (Beach Boys came on and seemed to stay on for the whole trip, but I was paralyzed by the awkwardness of this conversation around me, and all the weird people on that train, and the otherwise attractive woman making faces into her phone as she had a video call with someone).

And then today, after the ride in with the american indian and the chinese gal with the pink arms, the light was just right and amazing as I watched an older gal in high heels chase down the pedestrian mall ride in perfect light that would have made a dramatic and powerful image.